Momentos

In the film momento, the main character, Leonardo suffers from a very rare disorder. He has an untreatable form of memory loss where he cannot form new memories. Essentially this means every 15 minutes or so he forgets everything. However he still remembers before the incident, and especially his wife, who was raped and murdered. Filled with rage about this, he sets out to find her killer, but he can’t form new memories. His solution is to take pictures and even tattoo reminders on his body. 

This means that when Leonardo wakes up each and every moment he is clueless as to what has been going on in the previous years of his life. To remember who he is and what he is doing he uses a mirror to read off his body the things he believes to be true about his life. Each day he remembers he’s after his wife’s killer, and sets out for answers. However Leonardo does not believe eyewitness testimony to be a credible source, expressing, “Memory can change the shape of a room..” By this he is referring to the weak memory of the human mind. Each time we recall information from the past, we are distorting it, and we aren’t even remembering the actual event! We are remembering the last time we remembered it. Because of this memories get extremely modified over time, deeming eyewitness testimonies not credible sources of information. 

So arises the question how reliable really is our memory? The sad truth is that our own memories are just as reliable as the words tattooed on Leonardo. They both have as much credibility, and both have just as much proof to back them up. 

Philosopher David Hume says our personal sense of identity comes from our memories. He discusses our memory’s two principles of association, those being resemblance and causation. When referring to resemblance, Hume states, “memory not only discovers the identity, but also contributes to its production, by producing the relation of resemblance among the perceptions.” And for causation he wrote “memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity, by shewing us the relation of cause and effect among our different perspectives”. Hume also states that identity is just a habit that we have.

I personally do not think Hume would see Leonardo’s condition as any different from the standard human condition. Leonardo’s writings and pictures have the same amount of proof and credibility as our memories, which make up who we are. Both indicate everything about our present, thus they each explain why we are where we are, doing what we are doing. Therefore we really aren’t all that different from Leonardo’s state. 

It can be seen throughout the film Momento that when Leonardo wakes up, he sees everything that makes him, himself. Who’s to say we each don’t do this on a softer, smaller scale? Every morning when we wake up, we wake up in our room, surrounded by our belongings. These items can give us a sense of identity, in many ways. Some of our belongings have memories tied to them, as a personal example I have Coca Cola lamp next to my bed that was my grandfathers. So every time I look at that lamp, my mind is flooded with memories of my late grandpa. It’s memories like that that make me who I am, and almost each item I own reminds me of a loved one or a good time. Because of this, every day we get these little reminders of who we are and where we come from, which is really no different from Leonardo reading his tattoos.